I flip the book open and read the title page.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

by

Lewis Carroll

Collector’s Edition

Annotations & Literary Criticism © 2022

I’ve seen this book before. Not this exact one, but copies of it. It was required reading for the AP Literature class at my high school in Colorado. I planned on taking that class my senior year.

We left Earth before I had a chance to finish eleventh grade.

Those textbooks were brand new at school. Now this one is falling apart from age, despite the climate-controlled room it’s stored in.

I snap the book shut, and a tiny cloud of dust rises up. As I breathe in the musty scent of old pages and dry ink, the thing inside me that I’ve been trying to keep together breaks.

I let my head fall down to the book, pressing my face against the illustration of the Cheshire Cat’s wicked grin, and I sob, great, gulping sobs that choke me. And I think about the last time I choked, on tubes as I emerged from the slushy ice when I melted, and then, later, as Luthor’s arm pressed into my neck. And then all I can think about is how the girl at the rabbit farm choked too. And suddenly, I can’t get enough air into my lungs, just like she couldn’t get enough air into hers.

She died, alone and scared. I’m not dead, but I’m still alone and scared.

19

ELDER

“FOUND YOU,” I SAY, PUSHING OPEN THE DOOR.

Amy sits in the middle of the gallery on the second floor of the Recorder Hall. Her knees are pulled up to her chin and her arms wrap around her legs. A thick, old book rests beside her, open-faced but ignored. The art room is cluttered, sculptures and paintings from last gen’s artists stacked on one side and rows of canvases propped up on the other—mostly from Harley, but a few from some other artists. Art isn’t exactly respected here on Godspeed, and although Orion had made something of an attempt to turn the collection into a proper gallery, he’d been much more focused on books than paintings.

“How did you find me?” Amy asks as I plop down beside her.

I tug at the wi-com around her wrist. “They have locaters, you know.”

She nods silently. Her head falls against my shoulder, her long red hair spilling down my arm.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” I say.

“I’m just sorry it happened. Do you . . .” Amy doesn’t look at me as she says this. “Do you know who did it?”

“We have some suspects. Second Shipper Shelby said she saw a Feeder shouting yesterday in the Recorder Hall. Something about doing whatever he wanted . . .”

I watch her closer. Shelby also said that the person the Feeder was shouting at was Amy. She gives no indication of that now, although I can see the secret behind her eyes, clawing to get out.